'Winning Life' and the Discpline of Death at Iwawa Island
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'Winning Life' and the Discpline of Death at Iwawa Island. / Løvgren, Rose; Turner, Simon.
In: Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 84, No. 1, 01.2019, p. 27-40.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - 'Winning Life' and the Discpline of Death at Iwawa Island
AU - Løvgren, Rose
AU - Turner, Simon
PY - 2019/1
Y1 - 2019/1
N2 - This article analyses Iwawa, a rehabilitation centre for ‘delinquent’ young men in Rwanda. Like prisons, detention centres and refugee camps elsewhere, Iwawa is both a place of nurture and abandonment; of improving life and disallowing it. We argue that in order to grasp these tensions, we might pay attention to the role of death in disciplining those who are confined. A common way for these young men to address their experience was to say that they had to ‘win life’, and that those who did not win life would often die. Death as a possibility animates life in the camp and explains how the camp is at once a place of abandonment and improvement. The possibility of death also creates hierarchies in the camp between those who win and those who loose; those who become ideal developmental subjects of the Rwandan state and those who do not.
AB - This article analyses Iwawa, a rehabilitation centre for ‘delinquent’ young men in Rwanda. Like prisons, detention centres and refugee camps elsewhere, Iwawa is both a place of nurture and abandonment; of improving life and disallowing it. We argue that in order to grasp these tensions, we might pay attention to the role of death in disciplining those who are confined. A common way for these young men to address their experience was to say that they had to ‘win life’, and that those who did not win life would often die. Death as a possibility animates life in the camp and explains how the camp is at once a place of abandonment and improvement. The possibility of death also creates hierarchies in the camp between those who win and those who loose; those who become ideal developmental subjects of the Rwandan state and those who do not.
KW - Faculty of Social Sciences
KW - Rwanda
KW - Camps
KW - Confinement
KW - Death
KW - Animals
KW - discipline
U2 - 10.1080/00141844.2017.1373687
DO - 10.1080/00141844.2017.1373687
M3 - Journal article
VL - 84
SP - 27
EP - 40
JO - Ethnos
JF - Ethnos
SN - 0014-1844
IS - 1
ER -
ID: 215230778